Journal Books are hot these days along with all of the coloring books that have flooded the market. Think of them as coloring books without pictures. They are easy and fun to produce and sell on Amazon using print-on-demand though
KDP.Amazon, what we use to call CreateSpace. Journal books can also add nice additional product to your mix. If you have written a book, journals and workbooks make a great extension to your current book and as a product to sell.
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| Howard Hales' new Marketing Journal, made with PowerPoint |
There are many different kinds of journals that you can make, these include: Prayer Journals, Meditation Journals, Gratitude Journals, Travel Journals, Exercise Journals, Food and Recipe Journals, Medicine Journals, Planting and Gardening Journals, Inspirational Journals, Doodle, Art and Sketch Journals, Baby and Pregnancy Journals and many more.
Journals can be simple with just lines or complex with different page designs, ideas and tasks. They can be stand alone like a travel journal or be part of another book, such as a workbook that is a companion to a tips or lesson book.
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| By Becky Norwood |
One of the ways I think about getting ideas for journals is to look around you for repetitive tasks that need to be recorded. Like a diet journal, every day has to be written down. Journals can support another book or a period of time. The advantage of building one around a period of time is that the customer will need to buy the journal again and again. Something to think about when you are looking for ideas for your next journal project.
See
Becky Norwood's Networking Journal book based around keeping track of business contacts. A great use of a journal based on an activity.
Think about how you can take the type of journals above and mix them into these different journal structures.
• Simplest would be just blank pages.
• Add some lines or grids for drawing and writing.
• Add some quotes to the lines or grids, inspirational, tips, spiritual says.
• Add some illustrations to the pages, jazz them up a little, part coloring, part activities. How about adding puzzles and activities.
• A task driven journal that walks the reader through a series of steps, 100 days to a better life, that kind of book.
• A log journal, like a seasonal gardening journal, or health journal for diabetes or dieting. A book where you record daily activities and results. This kind of journal has a time frame on it, you need to buy it again and again.
• A journal that supports a book, the companion workbook. This is a great way to expand an existing book and add sales. Add some videos and you have a course.
• Lots of us produce information books, 52 tips, lessons learned, that kind of book. At the end of each chapter we often ask the reader questions or we start discussions around our books topic. Take your current book and expand out the questions or come up with some new ones, add lines for writing the answers, maybe make the book size bigger. It is a version of the workbook idea above. This book includes all the text of the original book, just expanded out with all the activities. Again this becomes a nice add on sale to the original book. Add the word workbook on the front cover.
Journals are pretty easy to produce using programs like InDesign, PowerPoint and even MS Word, really any program that can edit text and produce a pdf file. Use KDP.Amazon for printing and selling.
To learn more you can check out my latest course on
How to Make Journal Books. In the course I show you how to set up your journal book using InDesign and PowerPoint. Yes PowerPoint, you can a make a book with a program you probably already have on your computer. I have even seen people make them using Google Slides Presentation. So it can be pretty simple. The course also includes pages and cover templates for both InDesign and PowerPoint for a 160, 6" x 9" journal, along with step by step instructions. Check out the video intro above.
NEW TEMPLATES I have now added a full 140 page, 6" x9" with cover template that you can open, add art, customize and publish on KDP.Amazon. It comes in both PowerPoint and InDesign. It includes a title page, legal page, and all the pages set up with lines ready to go. The package also includes a laid out ready cover template for a 140 page book.
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| Sample pages from the InDesign and PowerPoint Journal template |
J. Bruce Jones is an author of over 50 books and a product developer of lots of stuff, Want to know how to publish your own book? Check out my latest book Self-Publishing SECRETS, Create, Publish and Launch Your Book. Click here to pick up a copy.
